Apart from Reliance Jio in the Indian telecom market, the only operator to add new subscribers over the last three years was state-run BSNL. Thanks to the aggressive approach, Reliance Jio added more than five million new users every month since its launch, which made it the leading telecom operator in just 3.5 years. Coming back to BSNL, it has been adding at least one lakh new users every month over the last three years, despite lacking 4G services. The reason behind this could be the affordable tariff plans and cheaper mobile tariffs available on the network. But the telecom operator is constantly losing wired broadband users every month due to increasing competition in the segment. BSNL's wired broadband subscriber base used to be over 10 million, but as per the latest Trai subscription data, the subscriber base has been reduced to 8.51 million.
BSNL Adding Telecom Subscribers Every Month Regularly
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recently released monthly subscription data for the month of November 2019. In the month, Trai reported 341,722 new users have been added by BSNL, which took its overall telecom market share to 10.19%. The total number of telecom subscriber base at the end of November 30, 2019, stood at 1154.39 million, out of which BSNL has 10.19% of market share. This essentially means the telco has an overall subscriber base of 117.6 million. In the month of December 2019, BSNL could have crossed 120 million user base due to the increase in prepaid tariffs by private telcos.
During the same month, Reliance Jio added 5.6 million new users, followed by Bharti Airtel with 1.6 million new subscribers. Vodafone Idea lost a whopping 36.4 million users, which drastically reduced the telco' subscriber base and overall telecom subscriber base.
BSNL adding new subscribers every month will surely come as a surprise considering the telco has no 4G services on offer right now. BSNL' subscriber base started to see a major increase after the introduction of minimum recharge scheme from Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea. Even after the latest tariff revision, Reliance Jio has the upper hand in the data tariffs segment, but the telco's limitation of off-net voice calls is not inspiring confidence. As a result, Jio customers are moving to either BSNL or Bharti Airtel network.
Alongside the affordable 3G mobile tariffs, BSNL also runs limited period offers, extra data offer and so on every now and then to keep the users attracted.
BSNL Wired Broadband User Base Dips
In the wireless segment, BSNL is adding new users every month, but what about the wireline segment where the ISP has been an undisputed leader for more than ten years now? Well, BSNL is losing the charm in the wired broadband segment thanks to the intense competition in the segment. In November 2019, BSNL lost 1.64 lakh broadband subscribers which brought down its overall wired broadband subscriber base to 8.51 million. The number used to hover around 12 million, but the competition in the broadband sector has intensified over the last two-three years with private ISPs offering up to 1 Gbps speeds in various parts of the country.
BSNL is still the leading wired broadband operator in India with a market share of 46.21%, followed by Bharti Airtel with 20.24%. MTNL is third on the list with 14.78% share. The lukewarm JioFiber plans aren't helping the service provider as expected as it managed to have just 4.81% market share at the end of November 2019.
